Geothermal energy key to Kenya power stability

from MARIA MACHARIA in Nairobi, KenyaNAIROBI – KENYA, the East African economic hub, has turned its focus to geothermal energy to avoid power shortages encountered by rival economies in the continent.

While many African countries are battling load-shedding challenges emanating from power scarcity, Kenya’s move to invest heavily in geothermal energy is slowly paying dividends as evidenced by adequate electricity supply compared to the usual and dependable hydro-electricity power supplies, which are dwindling at a faster pace.

Statistical data made available to CAJ News by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics reveal that a total of 381.6 megawatts of geothermal was generated for Kenya in December as compared to 282,25 megawatts of hydro-electricity during the same period.

The geothermal energy, which was introduced at a small scale, has in fact slightly overtaken the hydro-electricity energy generation in the East African nation with the outlook promising that the thermal energy supply would keep increasing as opposed to hydro-electricity supply.

Already, nergy experts argue that 50,4 per cent of the total 757.6MW came from geothermal, an indicator showing future hopes for Kenya’s reliable and sustain energy would come from geothermal energy.

Kenya Electricity Generation Company (KenGen) produces a total of 311 megawatts with 280MW being availed to the electricity national grid.

Geothermal energy, which is the heat from the earth, is a clean and sustainable energy source.

Resources of geothermal energy range from the shallow ground to hot water and hot rock found a few miles beneath the earth’s surface, and down even deeper to the extremely high temperatures of molten rock called magma.